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A discussion about Featured Blogs

No, I’m not asking for any code. Just looking for ideas.

I’ve pointed this out a couple of times on the mu forums but we’ve never really had a discussion about it.

What makes a Featured Blog?

Right now, we have two systems on our installs. It’s either a manual copy and paste done by the blog admin or a ranking system based on the average number of page views within a certain time against the number of unique visitors. (Plus a couple of things thrown in there.)

Using the system, we have a number of installs where the same blogs always rank high than the rest. Webcomics usually. A Choose Your Own Adventure blog as well.

And manual copy and paste pulls time away from site admins.

What do other folks use?

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:55:37
  • Bill007
    • Design Lord, Child of Thor

    I use Donchas MU Sitewide Tags Solution http://ocaoimh.ie/wordpress-mu-sitewide-tags/ with ahp_recent_posts_0.5 And Pull the latest Blogs written It seems to me that people adding New content to their Blogs should Be shown as featured, Just my Opinion

    But I do Like the Idea of time on site and page views that would be Xtra sweet But I would say there would be a monopoly effect there what about a random call from the Database

    I like My set Up anyway

  • andrea_r
    • The Incredible Code Injector

    See, to me , Featured anything – if you’re promoting good content (featured posts) or good users (featured blog) requires some sort of human intervention.

    Using some sort of metrics will always, like you foudn out, pull the same criteria to the top. What if Sally of the 40 hits a day wrote an exceptionally good post the whole community should see?

    You could let the users rate each post sitewide and then pull the best to the front.

    Or the Site Admin could have a checkbox somewhere to say “yeah, stick this up front”.

  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    The problem with Bill’s idea is that you also get the spam posts in there. Plus that’s just a matter of using whatever sitewide feed system you’re using and show the content as Latest Posts.

    Andrea’s idea goes along with our manual copy and paste but we’re getting admins who are finding this a drag or time consuming. (edit: Please remember that our big install is run by a soccer mom with three kids.)

    The rate post idea is good and we have that code already in place. Have to think about that. We do have an outputted list on some of our installs.

    To answer Andrea’s comment about the same posts always showing up, when we compile the list every few hours with our code, it only pulls the most recent posts. On some installs, it;s only the posts from the last 24 or 48 hours. On others, it goes back up to two weeks.

    I just want to pick some brains here. Trying to think of a different way of doing it.

  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    It’s doable and a good suggestion but you have huge amounts of readers who don’t make comments. I mean I look at a site like mine where I may have 3k readers for a post but only have a comment or two. Then I look at a site like probloggers where everybody comments just to kiss ass and throw in a link or two.

  • drmike
    • DEV MAN’s Mascot

    It’s doable and a good suggestion but you have huge amounts of readers who don’t make comments. I mean I look at a site like mine where I may have 3k readers for a post but only have a comment or two. Then I look at a site like probloggers where everybody comments just to kiss ass and throw in a link or two.

  • Bill007
    • Design Lord, Child of Thor

    Hmmm This is not an easy Task getting the most deserving posts to feature

    Its Like the Whole thing needs to be a combination of comments, page Views, time on site, and last update

    I know that’s Hard to program could you do comparisons on each blogs Database and picking the best of those and featuring them

    hey change the Variables but you get the Idea

    Just another thought